Around the Bloc: Power Flows Again Across Ukraine-Crimea Line
Premier of Russian-controlled territory rules out future energy cooperation with Kyiv.
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Premier of Russian-controlled territory rules out future energy cooperation with Kyiv.
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Many famous tourism destinations of the eastern Himalayas have become severely polluted and environmentally vulnerable due to decades of unsustainable mass tourism practices. The recent popularization of the so called 'ecotourism destinations' as alternatives to these degraded sites have raised considerable debate among academia, planners and decision makers regarding community based development and environmental conservation. In this study, the newly initiated tourism ventures of a mountainous village named Silerigaon located in this region were evaluated as a case study through participatory appraisals among tourists and local residents to comprehend whether these ventures could truly be termed as ecotourism initiatives. Results derived from the analyses of the primary data collected through these appraisals showed that although the area possessed pristine natural environment and excellent scenic beauty, lack of proper civic amenities and physical infrastructure was hindering the development of sustainable tourism. Here, tourism activities had notably contributed to the increase in annual savings of community members but these financial gains had not equally transcended to all spheres of sustainable community based development. Till now, the activities have lacked the systematic long-term planning required for sustainable ecotourism and nature conservation. Accordingly, these could not be designated as ecotourism activities in their present orientation and capacity. In this regard, several necessary corrective measures to transform these activities into proper ecotourism ones have been suggested.
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The article presents, with an example of four cities of various size, a phenomenon of a drop in water consumption by the city population in Poland. The paper draws on 1995-2012 official statistics. A significant decrease in household water consumption was observed, which refers to both the total water volume used by households as well as the average daily water consumption per resident. The article also determines the most essential factors affecting the amount of water consumed, out of which the price of water appears to be of the most significant one.
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The article is a case study of land use planning in the surroundings of the eastern side of the runway of the former airport Rakowice-Czyżyny in Cracow. The area was chosen because it is an example reflecting the history of many urban spaces that are well connected externally, well equipped in infrastructure, and favourably located in the city. They are now the scene of an intense market game, which arrogates to itself the almost unlimited right to determine the land use. Therefore, a study was conducted to verify the knowledge in that field. The analysis was based, inter alia, on differentiated source materials (including historical ones), a survey of press materials (mostly local ones), interviews with residents, the field analysis carried out in the research area and data analysis (primary market of real estate). The chosen example allowed the authors to confirm the theorems on the growing threats to the spatial order in a situation of struggle between supporters of neoliberal urbanism and broadly defined new urbanism. The latter cannot exist without spatial planning but since1990 in Poland we have been able to observe a crisis in this area. It leads to chaotic, too concentrated development in urban areas. This demonstrates that while the criticism of the new urbanism is in some dimensions justified, it cannot be used to legalize voluntary land development. This possibility of social and political permission for arbitrariness generates an "appetite" for space understood primarily as an economic good.
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In addition to providing conveniences that make it faster and easier for researchers and volunteers to perform calculations and communicate with one another, modern technologies have introduced changes to research in the humanities and social sciences in terms of the ways content for publication is subsequently analysed. Network users volunteer to do themselves some of the work which, in other circumstances, researchers would have to perform during the analysis of their products. This text embeds this “third power” of modern technologies in the context of thinking about online practices and the work conditions for researchers in the digital humanists.
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Over the previous 15-20 years (in Czech conditions), suburban processes have substantially influenced the appearance and transformation of municipalities on the fringe of larger cities. And it is not only the morphology of the municipality structure (new housing estates and their urban as well as architectural solutions) that has undergone the transformation, but also the functions municipalities have started to fulfil (the development of civic amenities and services). After such a long period of time, we are capable of identifying negative as well as positive impacts of suburban processes on municipalities, and evaluating the role of local actors (with regard to local governance) in the shaping of suburbias and their appearance (the area urban solution, infrastructure, architecture in terms of housing appearance, etc.). We are also capable of assessing new construction sites based on their location or appearance (housing naturally complementing or suitably extending the municipality built-up area, or, on the contrary, a satellite housing estate built "on a greenfield site"), social climate between old residents and newcomers, etc. The goal of the paper is to present the most significant aspects that have had influence on new housing construction in suburban zone municipalities, and to describe differences in the application of the concept of local governance (at the lowest - microregional, or possibly municipal tier) in positively impacted municipalities as compared with those affected rather negatively. Concentrating on the city of Olomouc and its suburban zone in greater detail, the study shall also outline expected future development.
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Residential suburbanisation is currently the most important urbanisation process transforming metropolitan areas in European post-socialist countries, especially in Central Europe and at Baltic states. The paper compares the statements of the mayors of the suburban municipalities situated in the hinterland of the city of České Budějovice (a one-hundred-thousand city in the South-West of the Czech Republic) and also the local building officials, spatial planning officials and experts regarding the recent, currently on-going and upcoming construction of houses in the suburbs and the regulation of these constructions. Further, it discusses the possibilities of influencing the construction of the houses through the spatial plans of municipalities, settlement zones, and metropolitan areas. The interviewed mayors consider, rather uncritically, the recent large construction of houses in their suburbs in general as appropriate. One third of the mayors, however, do not want any further suburban development of this kind. Spatial planning officials and building officials do not have sufficiently powerful tools to influence the extent of the construction and the designs of houses in the individual suburban municipalities and their suburbs. Some of them, together with the experts, support the reintroduction of the metropolitan area spatial plan.
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The adoption of a zoning plan or any change to it may result in an increase or a decrease in the value of real estate. In the case of increased property values, the Law on Spatial Planning and Development provides for a possibility for zoning fees to be determined by municipalities. The research thesis of the article is the statement that planning fees are not fully enforced due to property owners appealing against the decisions on establishing the fees. This paper aims to analyse the scope of the adopted local zoning plans in Cracow as well as zoning fees, charged relative to the increase in real estate value.
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Studentification is a global phenomenon that has been prominent in urban geographical discourse since the large-scale expansion of higher education in the early 1990s. In many developed and developing world countries, expansion in student enrolment has outstripped the ability of institutions of higher learning to provide adequate accommodation. Similar trends have been recorded in South Africa. The task of this paper is to investigate studentification as experienced in one of South Africa's secondary cities. The paper draws attention to the economic, socio-cultural, and physical characteristics of this form of student housing on host locations. It is argued that studentification holds both positive and negative impacts for the host communities of Bloemfontein. Finally, it is suggested that studentification in South Africa requires greater research attention.
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This paper interrogates the geography of tourism innovation in the Western Cape, South Africa. In particular, innovations by tourism firms are mapped and local tourism innovation networks are analysed. Networking behaviour is examined since it is regarded as indispensable for accessing knowledge and learning for innovation purposes. The analysis draws on a broader investigation of tourism innovation and networking within the Western Cape province. It is revealed that the main tourist regions in the Western Cape are also the most innovative. Whilst external networking relations are observed to be highly significant for tourism innovation, local embeddedness remains critical for stimulating path creation and exploiting local core competencies for the competitiveness and survival of tourism firms and destinations.
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Coastal towns rely heavily on the quality and expanse of their beaches to attract tourists. Climate is an important tourism determinant, controlling the length and timing of peak arrivals. South African tourism is particularly reliant on these factors. Perceptions of tourists and tourist accommodation establishment regarding climate change threats to tourism are explored for the towns of St Francis Bay and Cape St Francis. Tourism accommodation establishments were predominantly concerned with day-to-day changes in weather, investing in small-scale infrastructural changes to improve the comfort of their guests. By contrast, tourists demonstrated greater concern for the risk of flooding, sea-level rise and the degeneration of the beaches. This reflects concerning disjunctures between perceptions of tourists and accommodation establishments regarding climate change threats. This may portray to tourists insufficient investment in adaptation at accommodation establishments, resulting in decreased tourist visitations in the short-term in favour of destinations perceived as better prepared.
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Central Europe, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Southeast Europe as macro- region space concepts are not regions designable by physical geography; the geographical content of these concepts is drawn and re-drawn by historical, cultural and geopolitical processes. Debates on the extension and content of the macro-regions featured intensify every now and then, especially in crisis periods - it is enough to think of the years before, during and after the world wars, the regime change, and these days. Our paper, with the brief summary of the preliminaries, highlights, from the perspective of our age, the geopolitically determined transformation and demonstrates the findings of our empirical research. During our research we made a questionnaire survey in which we recorded mental maps of the university students of Hungary and its seven neighbour countries, looking at where the respondents put their own countries and what image of the respective macro-regions lived in their minds. Our findings may be subject to debates but clearly show the convergent or divergent directions of the respective countries, at least as regards the judgement by the youth.
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The system of pedestrian urban space is the primary source of information on the state of the space. Walking around a city, we are perceptually building in our mind its physiognomic silhouette, which becomes the basis for evaluating the attractiveness of a city. Unfortunately, pedestrian traffic is rarely the subject of careful planning and design. Usually it regulates itself or is a side-effect of building an extensive system of road communication. On the other hand, concepts of shaping this system as a primary one appear more and more often, and pedestrian space is seen as high priority public space. The purpose of the article was to evaluate qualitative evaluation methods determining the current state of pedestrian pathways in the town Giżycko. Valuing quality, as a part of the science called qualimetrics, refers to determining the quality of objects which are the product of human activities, designed to meet the needs of human beings. At the root, it is a science relating to the determination of the quality of market items, supporting the production management process. As space, particularly urbanized, is created by people to satisfy their needs, it was concluded that quality valuation methods may also be useful to assess the quality of space. The article focuses on the quality of pedestrian routes that are essential to the central part of Giżycko. For these routes, the current state of the features identified as key for their quality was investigated, and quality classes of the routes were determined by analysis. The procedure can be a tool supporting the planning and implementation of modernization and renovation works for the area of pedestrian communication, and thus the image of the city.
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Despite of increasing volumes of individual passenger transport and growing dependence of the post-socialist societies on the passenger car, public transport is still inevitable for certain communities. Its social and environmental aspects are obvious reasons why public transport remains within the scope of state and regional policies as a mixture of public and commercial services. Long-distance and international overground public transport represents a higher standard of travelling of considerably commercial nature. An important feature of this segment of the public transport is its capability to compete with individual transportation for long-distance journeys. The commercial character of the long-distance public transport should motivate operators to run territorially effective links covering adequately populated communites and regions with high demand for this segment of public transport services. This study deals with several territorial aspects of the network of long distance and international bus and train links of public transport in the Slovak Republic. The network of communities having direct access to the high-standard modes of public transport has been identified, revealing some of their spatial patterns and focusing on categorization of urban settlements by selected parameters of high-standard public transport services. The relationship with the population size of the urban settlements is assessed in the study, too
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Renewed interest is being shown in South Africa in the promotion of infrastructure for renewable energy (RE) to supplement the country's current energy-generation capacity and to break loose from its dependency on an unsustainable fossil-fuel-based energy-provision system. The latter system not only has unfavourable consequences for the environment, but is managed by a state-owned institution which since 2008 has been incapable of providing reliable electricity. RE infrastructure - especially for the generation of solar and wind energy - is a relatively new feature in the South African landscape. This paper examines the spatial distribution of the newly commissioned infrastructures for wind and solar energy (operational and under construction) and the role they can play in the diversification of the rural economies of parts of the country's Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces. First, literature on evolutionary economic geography, path dependence and new path creation is reviewed. Second, the role of a single energy provider - embedded in a monopolistic energy policy -in inhibiting the transition from a mainly fossil-fuel-based energy-provision system to a multisource (multi-owner) provision system is discussed. Third, the reasoning behind the siting of the infrastructures for solar and wind energy in three particular provinces is explained. Fourth, the possible roles these new infrastructures can play in the diversification of the rural economies where they occur are advanced. The paper concludes that solar- and wind-energy projects have the ability to transform the South African energy context and that these projects present some positive socio-economic impacts for rural economies in the three particular provinces. The paper also recommends that future research efforts should be aimed at the evolution of this socioeconomic transformation by taking into account the pre-development context of the areas under study.
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The article sets demographic change in the Alps in the framework of European Territorial Cooperation programs . A statistical overview of selected regions in five Alpine countries serves as a basis for further policy analysis. The latter was undertaken to reveal how transnational projects tackle youth issues, including the difficulties within the labour and real estate markets that appeared to be the most problematic factors influencing (out) migration of the youth. While there is only a minor recognition of the young in current policy making on supranational, regional and local levels, the analysis showed that the added value of transnational programs for mountain regions and localities can be recognized in the development of multi-stakeholder environments, creating and transferring new solutions for the labour market as well as empowering youth participation in policy processes. However, the extent to which these solutions might contribute to overcoming the challenges of demographic change because of transnational programs is limited by various factors. Among these are the precise governance framework, administrative capacity, and population figures.
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Transnational entrepreneurship is an evolving field of research which occupies an interface between social and regional sciences. The phenomenon of transnational entrepreneurship is driven by entrepreneurs that migrate from one country to another whilst maintaining business-related linkages with their former country of origin and the adopted country. The most critical distinguishing feature of transnational entrepreneurs is bifocality or the ability to function across two different business environments. Most writings on transnational entrepreneurship concentrate on business individuals from the global South operating enterprises in the global North. Absent are empirical studies of the nature and behaviour of transnational migrant entrepreneurs who operate across or between emerging or developing economies. This South-South gap in international research concerning transnational entrepreneurship is addressed in the paper which provides an exploratory analysis of the nature of transnational entrepreneurship occurring in Southern Africa using evidence of Zimbabwean transnational entrepreneurs based in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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In the following text I would like to discuss the operation of three interdependent fields of cultural production responsible for the production of computer games. Among the questions that interest me are what kind of games are produced by the Polish, American and Macedonian gaming industry, how their contents fit into the broader context of global interdependence, and how they manifest themselves in the power relations between the cultures within which they exist and operate.
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China emphasises the principle of maintaining a balance between population, resources and the environment, promoting economic, social, and environmental development. Therefore, it should initiate a revolution in areas related to the production and use of energy by promoting energy-efficient and low-carbon development industry as well as new and renewable sources of energy in building the country’s energy security. This study focuses on the implementation of energy-saving policies in China.
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This article reviews the research effort in the field of corporate entrepreneurship from recent decades and explores internal and external factors that trigger entrepreneurial behavior within the organization. We are discussing corporate entrepreneurship in the context of established companies as a way to improve efficiency, competitive advantage and the level of innovativeness. Corporate entrepreneurship supports the company efforts to use and develop competitive advantages, to find new market opportunities and to build up organizational competencies to explore them. We are examining the entrepreneurial intensity in established companies from the digital advertising industry.
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